The invention relates to a system for managing a community provided in an information system, and a method thereof. Specifically, the invention relates to a system for controlling registration of information in the community, and to a method thereof.
Recently, with an increased use of communication networks, user communities have been provided in information systems in which a specific or an unspecified user registers information to be available to other users for reference. There already exist bulletin boards, weblogs, mailing lists, news groups, webcasts, multiplayer online games, or versus games as examples of such user communities.
In such a user community, information provided by a user may be against discipline and order of a community and public decency. In such a case, other users may feel uncomfortable viewing such information, and furthermore, may engage less in the community to make it impossible to continue running the community. A method of defining, by a rule, information to be permitted to be registered is conceivable. However, a user may inadvertently register information violating the rule. For this reason, a method of controlling the registration of information with a sort of technical means is desired.
As a technology for reference, there has been proposed a technology in which predetermined keywords such as censored words are replaced with predetermined words such as “***” or “beep” sound (refer to Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2005-025657). In addition, as another technology for reference, there has been proposed a technology for dropping a communication packet for requesting information when the combination of the destination URL and the source IP address is a specific one (refer to Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2004-187206). According to this technology, it is possible to inhibit a specific user from accessing a specific URL.
However, types of unregisterable information may vary depending on user communities. Specifically, in a user community created by users having specific tastes, types of information unregisterable in another community may be registrable. In addition, information which used to be registrable may become unregisterable with times changing. As described, it is difficult to uniformly determine types of unregisterable information in advance. Thus, it is difficult to appropriately manage a plurality of user communities as a whole, with the technology proposed in the Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2005-025657 alone.
According to the technology in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2004-187206, availability of information for browsing can be set on a user basis. However, a user to whom the technology in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2004-187206 does not apply is free to browse information disclosed in a homepage with a specific URL. Such a privileged user as an administrator of an information processing system, can browse the information as well. In other words, it is generally difficult to bring information, once disclosed to the public, back to be undisclosed again. Thus, a technology is desired for limiting registration of information while the information is still undisclosed.